There are a number of different ways to read that aren’t just limited to books on paper. My son, for instance, is an avid lover of audio books. There’s a bit of an argument about whether audio books is really reading. I say absolutely, it’s really reading. You are absorbing story and idea and character and all the things that reading entails. Just because you aren’t actually doing it with your eyes, one wouldn’t say reading brail isn’t really reading. Why is reading audio books not — why is that any different?
Audio books can be a wonderful tool for a reluctant reader. For my son, he has some vision issues. Reading is fatiguing for him. Audio books are a wonderful solution for him. Audio books are also a terrific way for the older child to experience the value of read aloud without necessarily feeling like they’re being read to by their parent or what have you.
All of the additional support in terms of comprehension and absorbing the story and meaning and nuance are all being gained subtly in that stealth mode I was talking about before by hearing the story told to them by somebody who is modeling tone and wonderful reading skills and so forth in a way that the child might not necessarily be able to do in reading it for themselves.
The other important piece is that we know that until about eighth grade, our listening skills and our reading skills haven’t converged, so it’s terribly important to keep reading to older kids because we can still absorb much more from hearing a story than we can from decoding it ourselves on the paper. Audio books are a wonderful way to continue to help kids do that, and they will always gain so much more from hearing it or being told a story or listening to the story than from fighting through reading it themselves.
